Debian Testing

As of 25 July 2012, the Debian repositories does not contain sufficiently up-to-date python GObject introspection packages and so need to be installed from the experimental repository, which currently contains version 3.3.4. Perhaps the simplest way to install is just to download the latest packages from the Debian packages web site. The files required can be found for different architectures at:

KDE

To set the theme, open gramps, and open System settings -> Application Appearance -> GTK+ Appearance, and select different theme, click on apply. If you see Gramps update completely, you have selected a theme with GTK 3 support. If the theme falls back to something consisting of Raleigh theme components, the theme does not have good GTK 3 support. Even if Gramps updates, not all elements visible will update. Restart Gramps to be sure the theme works as intended. You can install gtk-theme-switch to test themes.

Spell Check Install

For working spell check, we need a patched gtkspell version that supports gobject introspection. A working version is the changes branch at https://github.com/manisandro/gtkspell3/tree/changes. So one needs to install this version of gtkspell. The python-gtkspell code is then no longer needed, and can be removed. Source of this code is a sourceforge bug entry [7] and a redhat bug entry: [8]

WebKit for Htmlrenderer

OsmGpsMap for Geography

The Geography requires osmgpsmap. Introspection bindings for this is not currently available, so you need to compile it.
As it doesn't work correctly for the moment and some patches are not in git, I forked osmgpsmap.

First sets library to /usr/local/lib so as to find osmgpsmap and gtkspell, second /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ to find the local install of pygobject

Problems

If anyone files a bug against PyGobject, Gtk or any of the Gtk dependencies (except Cairo, which isn't part of Gnome), please add John (the address bugzilla has is jralls@ceridwen.fremont.ca.us) to the CC list at the bottom of the bug report page or post the bug URI to the gramps-devel list.

Open

We cannot set strings in struct, see GTK bug [11] It seems we can do without this, so not an issue at the moment

osmgpsmap is GTK2. There is a GTK3 branch in git, we should try it, and contribute to the conversion. In Progress: Geography really minimalist : no menu, no markers, ...

TypeError: Error when calling the metaclass bases
metaclass conflict: the metaclass of a derived class must be a (non-strict) subclass of the metaclasses of all its bases

Geography : missing tiles : osm-gps-map problem.

Geography : for all other problems, use last version with git pull. Be careful, osm-gps-map is now 0.8. You must remove all 1.0 versions (OsmGpsMap*.gir and OsmGpsMap*.typelib)

No rows_reordered function on treemodels in python, see GTK bug [12]. Current fix: disconnect and reconnect the model so sort need not emit rows-reordered signal. However, this means the history of expand collapse of nodes in a treeview is lost after rows have been reordered (this happens in gramps on click on the column that is already sorted.

Geography : We cannot mix osmgpsmap between trunk and gramps34 and others.

Solved or workaround

there are some drag and drop issues: [13], [14]. Solved: Use set_target_list functions for drag and drop with a created TargetList.

error in list_families on textview in styledtexteditor: [15]. Workaround: we use a global function that calls this once as workaround. There is a fix upstream.

str and unicode no longer seem to work, the encoding must be passed too; Future: deprecate unicode() in the code, as we want to support python 3' - SOLVED FOR NOW: added reload(sys) in gramps.py and set encoding to utf-8. Is there a better way that is userfriendly?

there is no longer automatic conversion to str utf-8 when using GTK functions, we must convert before passing to GTK.

glade can no longer work with our catalog. We need to upgrade comboboxentry to combobox with has_entry manually, and hope editors keep working... - Solved: Although our catalog cannot be opened, we can use glade with undefined elements without issues.

menu.popup does not seem to work in some instances. Solved: Make sure the reference to menu survives, so eg, do self.menu= function, then self.menu.popup. Alternatively, passing position function seems to also work as workaround, see grampsbar.py for example

Many Gtk elements no longer grab certain events. Solved: Add a Gtk.EventBox under them to grab the event.